LOWELL -- She was the left hand to friend and Bartlett Community Partnership School teaching partner Melissa Zorbas' right hand.

"She's the one who dotted my 'i's and crossed my 't's," Zorbas said Wednesday about her longtime friend, Melissa Boyd.

The unsinkable duo, who had taught, laughed and cried together in the Lowell public school system for 15 years, was broken up last Tuesday when second-grade teacher Boyd died following a sudden onset of bacterial meningitis.

Boyd, 40, a Chelmsford native, leaves behind a grieving family, countless friends, a beloved professional soccer team and an entire school of admirers.

Her father, Dave Boyd, said in an email Wednesday that she was the type of daughter a dad could feel proud of.

"She loved her job as a teacher as well as her students," he wrote. "She was the most unprejudiced person we knew."

David Boyd and his wife, Pat, spent part of Wednesday tending to their daughter's Tyngsboro apartment. On Monday, they held a funeral for Melissa -- or Missy, as he sometimes took to calling her. For Bartlett School Principal Grace Wai, the importance of Melissa Boyd's burial date was not lost on the school.

With Monday being observed as Columbus Day, it meant teachers and students were able to observe the funeral of their friend. They appeared in droves at St. Mary Parish in Chelmsford, filling 10 pews for Melissa's 11 a.m. funeral Mass.

"What I feel now is that there's a spirit missing from this school," Wai said Wednesday.

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Lowell Health Director Frank Singleton said Monday that Boyd had spent the morning of Sept. 29, a Saturday, picking apples at Bolton Spring Farm. Later that day she told her parents she wasn't feeling well. What Boyd did not know, according to Singleton, was that her deteriorating condition was the result of a rare form of bacterial meningitis sparked by bacteria called streptococcus pneumoniae -- completely unrelated to the current nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis that has been tied to a Framingham pharmaceutical company's steroid shot medication.

Boyd died on Oct. 2 at Lowell General Hospital.

Weeks before the apple-picking adventure there was the day she met Marblehead's Kayla Harrison, the first American to win Olympic gold in judo. There's a photo on Boyd's Facebook.com page of a smiling Harrison, waving back to a camera clutched by a likely smiling Boyd. Look further along Boyd's timeline and there she is north of the border, cheering on the New England Revolution Major League Soccer club as they square off against the Montreal Impact. There's photos from Aug. 25 at Salisbury Beach with Boyd rocking out to Boston's Adam Ezra Group. Now it's Aug. 14 and Boyd is with friends exploring Echo Lake State Park in Conway, N.H.

In every photo, it seems, Boyd is surrounded by friends and family. These are the memories of the past, but her legacy -- something even a virulent illness like bacterial meningitis could never invade -- will always live on at the Bartlett School.

She was just 40 years old but friends said Boyd managed to pack a lifetime of love and adventure into that short span of time.

Melissa Simpson, another teacher at the Bartlett School, said Boyd was always the first one to reach out to a new staff member. Zorbas said Boyd was inspired when it came to teaching kids. Kevin Noa, a physical-education teacher at the school, met Boyd while the two of them were pursuing their masters degrees at UMass Lowell. He recalled in an email Monday that one of Boyd's most creative lessons was the way she taught children how England went about levying unfair taxes on colonists on the eve of the Revolutionary War.

"She would give all her students M&M's and then would begin taking them back for payment for the Stamp Act and tea tax," he wrote. "It was a great hook."

Wai said it's "a sense of loss that will never go away," especially as the school keeps holding activities. She said Boyd was the one who never missed a chance to get involved setting up dances, open gym activities and after-school socials.

"She was there for everything and the kids always remember that," Wai added.

Wai said social workers arrived at the school Wednesday morning to help address emotional needs. Substitute teachers chipped in time each day last week whenever teachers had to take a break. The regularly-scheduled monthly all-school assembly had already been slated for Friday and Wai said that's "when the floodgates opened, a good healing moment."

Several eighth-grade students read statements about what Boyd meant to the school. Music teacher Rachel Crawford sang the Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men collaboration "One Sweet Day," a song about how loved ones are taken for granted until they are lost.

"We were all crying but it's something that needed to happen," said Wai.

Crawford said Wednesday that Boyd was one of her best friends. Boyd was in the hospital when Crawford gave birth to her daughter. It's symbolic, she said, of the way the school functions as if it were a family.

"We're a pretty close staff, our work relationships evolve into friendships and then family," Crawford noted.

It's a family that's been heartbroken for over a week.

Singleton said Pat Boyd contacted the school on Monday morning to report her daughter's hospitalization and meningitis diagnosis. Later that day the state notified Singleton that there was a meningitis case. He said the state first notified Tyngsboro, where Boyd lived, meaning Lowell had to request permission from the state to have the information shared.

"Under Massachusetts law we offered to arrange a risk communication session with our medical adviser who is also a school physician," said Singleton, referring to a process he said was aimed at quelling fears over whether Boyd's condition was contagious, which it was not. "Our involvement was declined with instruction to refer all inquiries to (Lowell School Superintendent Jean) Franco."

Franco has not yet returned a call seeking comment.

Wai was quick, however, to praise the district's response to the tragedy that befell the Bartlett School.

She added that a fund has been created in Boyd's honor that will help support extracurricular activities at the school. Wai said Boyd had recently started coaching a school cross-country team and had been a big supporter of intramural basketball and volleyball.

In his Wednesday email, Dave Boyd wrote, "Melissa was not a perfect child but none are."

A schoolhouse full of children in Lowell might disagree.

You can support extracurricular activities at the Bartlett School by writing a check donation, payable to Enterprise Bank, 185 Littleton Road, Chelmsford, with the Bartlett School Extracurricular Activities Fund mentioned in the memo. Follow Evan Lips at Twitter.com/evanmlips.

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